We are made in God’s image, so we are inherently good, but we are also made of the earth, which passes away. This is a painful reality that causes a vast dichotomy with which we internally wrestle, whether knowingly or not.
The earthly part that is corruptible is powerful, because it’s what we experience directly through our senses; it can be harder to connect with God's image, because we can't easily see, hear, touch, smell, or taste who or what God is.
This ease with which we experience the world, and the difficulty that we can find in uniting with God, causes us to have a disposition where we tend put our trust in the created instead of the creator. This is evidenced when we find ourselves worshippers of people, places, and things, instead of God. But what does this actually mean? It all goes back to control: what we hold on to in avoidance of the frightening truth that life is impermanent. Grasping at straws instead of surrendering in faith.
Back in the Garden of Eden, we were protected by a sort of veil. This veil allowed us experience the world, while also remaining in close fellowship with God. When our ancestors ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that veil was compromised. Suddenly we knew we would die. When God reconciled his people back to him, a new veil1 was created, but in a way this further made God harder to access2.
All of our sin is manifested in our efforts to deny the truth that the original veil was protecting us from. But in God's mercy, he offered a new way to pass through this world - the cross. We call Jesus the New Adam because when he died, the veil3 was ruptured once again: while we die by Adam, we live by Christ4.
Through Christ's agape love, we can find the narrow gate that offers us a way out of the torment of a transitory existence: a standard we weren't originally designed for. Now under a new and eternal covenant, we can be in the world, but not of it, returning back to God in right relationship with him.
